Gutenburg Printing Press

Andrew cutting his stamp on the potato

Austin cutting his stamp. Sample of work.

Today we studied about Johann Gutenberg and the printing of the first bible. We did a project with potatoes and cutting out the image that you want on the potato like a stamp. This was a lot more difficult than we thought it was going to be. We also quickly realized how difficult it must have been for Johann to do this, of course he was using blocks of wood. This was one of those times that because of the activity that we put with the lesson that I saw the boys get "it". Very fun. But a note to any of those who might be considering doing this, potatoes are wet and slimy. They also start to turn brown very quickly. Which at that point they start to smell funny:)